Post the Merge, the initial market reaction to Ethereum's price was fairly neutral with no sudden rapid upside or otherwise.

One of the immediate impacts of the Merge is the reduction in energy consumption by a whopping 99.5%. This would make the ecosystem more agreeable to a vast section of investment funds, users, analysts as well as developers who focus on ESG principles.

The importance of the Merge may be understood by the fact that the primary consensus mechanism which is pretty much the heartbeat of a blockchain network be replaced without skipping a beat. Add to it the fact that billions of dollars are being managed by the network and its ecosystem of smart contracts.

Also, Google chose to create a customized count-down time for the Merge event. Here is a glimpse of the same

What is this new token called $ETHPoW?

$ETHPoW is the direct result of the democratic philosophy of decentralized networks. Although most of the world has accepted and lauded Ethereum's switch to a PoS model, there are certain groups who think otherwise and would like to continue with the Proof-of-work model.

Without debating the good or bad aspects of such a move, the fact is that Ethereum in its PoW form will continue to live on as a separate network, a hard-fork as is called in blockchain parlance.

What that also means is that Ethereum holders would have an equivalent number of $ETHPoW tokens if they had held non-zero Ether in their wallet. The new chain would operate using a different chain identifier which is used to tell wallet clients which network to connect to.

Before you get excited about creating value out of thin air, it still remains to be seen how much value these new tokens would command. The more likely scenario is that it would be negligible compared to the primary Eth token on the PoS mainnet. However, if the value is significant, then it would also mean that the primary tokens would now demand a lesser value so there will be a balance and an equilibrium that would be arrived at.

Whether $ETHPoW rides into oblivion soon or becomes an underdog and an unexpected challenger in the game of dominance in the Ethereum world is a matter of speculation. As of today just after the merge, the $ETHPoW token is trading at 40 USD with a sudden spike to 60 USD.

A brief overview of how Proof-of-Stake works in the Beacon consensus chain

Now that all the focus is on Merge, it would be the right opportunity to understand more about this new consensus layer. The primary thing that is going to happen as part of the Merge is the switch from Proof-of-Work consensus model to the Proof-of-Stake consensus model facilitated by the Beacon chain consensus layer. For a primer on Blockchain Consensus mechanisms, you can refer to - https://mirror.xyz/durneja.eth/gKt8c26kbFUHyn8ITRaZD8aYXlPw9Ir5ObWPi7g91Cc

As the switch to PoS happens, mining as a concept will cease to exist for introducing new blocks in the Ethereum Mainnet. This is going to be replaced by a pseudo-random selection of nodes that would propose the next block. The proposed block would be validated by a “committee” of other nodes or “validators”. The block “proposer” is also a validator node that has been given the task of proposing a new block.

Earlier, a new block was introduced at roughly 13.2 seconds plus or minus depending on the hashing complexity/computing power. Now, epochs would become the primary time unit in the network and each epoch is going to be further subdivided into slots. Each slot would be exactly equal to 12 seconds, which would make the duration of the epoch to be around 6.4 minutes or 6 minutes 24 seconds. It may also happen that some of these proposers may fail to propose a block within the stipulated time period of 12 seconds. In that case, the particular slot would be empty and there are penalties involved in such scenarios for the particular validator/proposer.

Before an epoch begins, the proposers would be chosen from the set of validators for each slot. Also, the committee of validators is also going to be finalized.

An important thing to note here is that the probability of a particular validator being selected for proposing a block is directly proportional to the amount of Ether they have staked into the system. This is the primary proof of stake aspect where the more amount you stake to secure the network the higher the likelihood of your validator getting a chance to propose new blocks and thus get a portion of the additional transaction rewards. To reduce the motivation for validators to disrupt the system there is a minimum staking requirement of 32 ETH that is kept by the network. This is a primary requirement for a node to be considered as a proposer although there is no minimum requirement to run a node and secure the network by validating transactions and blocks.

This particular model makes the network highly secure as in order to put into effect an attack on the system, a validator must have staked a significant amount of tokens in the system and if fraudulent activity is detected by the other validators in the system, there is a very high risk of that validator losing out on all their staked tokens. Thus, the penalties for such action significantly outweigh any potential chances of taking control over the network, if at all there is a chance for the same.

If you want to explore block generation, epochs, and slots on a real-time basis, you can take a look at this explorer website - https://beaconcha.in/

The Merge event also lays the foundation for future Ethereum network upgrades that are focused on scaling, primarily the Sharding of the Ethereum chain is what is to come next as an upgrade.

We also covered some additional details about the Ethereum Merge in an earlier article that includes other references as well. Feel free to give it a read at - https://mirror.xyz/durneja.eth/6jr1A9QTho-B5Tv5VoXOzhKw4sZ9WgwD_WBzSYq65Ko

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The assumption here is that you are at least somewhat familiar with what NFTs are, probably minted or traded a few, are down to writing code and have some familiarity with the NEO ecosystem. If the answer to any of the questions is No, fear not, I’ll include some reading references at the end of the article to cover some of these aspects.

What is NEP-11

NEP-11 is a proposal that outlines the standard for writing NFTs in NEO. The NEP in NEP-11 stands for NEO Enhancement Proposal and contains standard definitions and enhancements for developing on the NEO Ecosystem. Just like NEP-11 is the standard for NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens, NEP-17 is the standard defining Fungible Tokens in NEO and which supersedes the NEP-5 definitions.

Now that we understand what is NEP-11 here is a link to the actual proposal. It contains the standard definitions, and protocol methods with samples in a few cases as well as contains a reference implementation for the same.

https://github.com/neo-project/proposals/blob/master/nep-11.mediawiki

The NEP-11 Protocol

In this section we will zoom in to look at the protocol definition and some of the key interface methods that we must necessarily implement and be very careful about their implementations so as to avoid any potential issues later, security or otherwise.

The basics

The first few methods we would look at are fairly straightforward and define the key elements of the NFT. They are symbol, decimals, and totalSupply.

The symbol method gives an identity to the NFT project and should return a string of upto 8 characters with no whitespaces. Examples - MYNFT, YOLONFT, etc.

The decimals method should return the number of decimals up to which the NFT token would be divisible. A value of 0 should be returned if the token is not intended to be fractionalized.

The totalSupply method should return the total number of tokens that are currently outstanding or in circulation. This should be updated at any such event where the supply is affected like mint, burn, etc.

Tokens and Ownership

These methods would include methods that either give information about the tokens or about the ownership details of those tokens both from an owner perspective as well as the token’s perspective. These methods would include - balanceOf, tokensOf, ownerOf. There are couple of other methods as well that are option but would be helpful to include in your smart contract for completion - tokens, properties.

The balanceOf method should return the number of tokens that are held by a particular address.

The ownerOf method should return the address of the holder of that particular token. The input should be the token id whose owner we are interested to know about.

The tokensOf method should return an iterator of all the tokens that are held by the particular address which is sent as the input.

The tokens method should return an iterator of all the tokens that are currently stored in the smart contract.

The properties method should return key-value pairs of the various properties or attributes of the particular token whose identifier is sent as an input. This is an important method as it would return the metadata that NFT viewers, and marketplaces would use to display the token visually. The attributes may include name, tokenURI, image, description, and any other attributes relevant to the project mechanics.

Transactional

Here we look at some of the interactive aspects of the NFT. Most important of these is the transfer method.

The transfer method as is obvious allows the token holders to transfer their tokens to another address/holder. The corresponding maps storing the ownership details should be updated accordingly.

There is also a specified transfer event that needs to be fired when a transfer gets executed and also in case of minting and burning events.

Another method that should be implemented when the contract should accept NFT tokens is the onNEP11Payment method.

Others

burn and mint are some of the other functions that aren’t specifically part of the protocol but would be helpful to achieve certain functionality as part of the NFT project. Minting and Burning methods (just like the others) could have an owner only check so that non-owners are not able to mint the tokens directly.

Another method that should be implemented especially when the NFT Tokens should be minted when fungible tokens are transferred to it is the onNEP17Payment method. You can have logic to set and check for the base price that is received as part of the transfer and based on that mint the token for the account that transferred the tokens.

You could have other owner-restricted methods to control and administer the tokens like controlling the base prices, retrieving or transferring funds, overriding mints, total supply, etc. Implement them depending on your particular use cases.

Next Step: Build

Hopefully the overview of NFTs and the background information on the NFT protocol, i.e the NEP-11 proposal should have given a fair understanding of what is needed to build out an NFT project but we are just getting started. In the next and final part of the article, we would actually look at some code and methods that would take you further in your journey to launch your first NFT project.

References

https://future.com/nft-canon/ The NFT Canon is an amazing resource catering to a broad section of people who intend to understand or do more with non-fungible tokens.

https://neo.org/dev#overview This is the NEO Developer page. Check out the various tools and frameworks relevant for your language as well as examples and tutorials to help you get started.

https://docs.neo.org/docs/en-us/index.html Contains all documentation around N3 with basic NEO concepts, guides, API specifications, and everything in between.

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The Bellatrix Upgrade makes the Beacon Chain (or the PoS consensus chain) prepared in a steady state for the eventual merge. The next and final step in the Merge process would be the Paris Upgrade where the switch will happen to the PoS chain for consensus. This is scheduled to happen at a Terminal Total Difficulty [TTD] of 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000. This would coincide with a real-world date of around September 14/15th.

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The Ethereum Mainnet Merge, which is just around the corner, is probably the most anticipated event in Ethereum’s history and not without reason since it would represent a massive shift in terms of the fundamentals of how Ethereum operates. It also sets the stage for the next set of upgrades that pave the way for the platform to be used by millions and billions of users.

We would try to understand what the Merge is and explore various aspects around it,  including what needs to be done, things to be aware of and what happens if things don’t go as per the plans. 

What is the Merge?

In a single line – the Merge will make Ethereum switch from the current Proof-of-work consensus model to a less energy consuming Proof-of-Stake model. The Beacon Chain, which is the Ethereum PoS chain, was running independently of the main Ethereum chain while it was being tested and nodes were participating in securing the network. The Beacon Chain went live on December 1st, 2020. 

During the Merge, the Beacon chain would take over the block consensus responsibilities of the main chain. For more info on Consensus Mechanisms, check out this article -

https://mirror.xyz/durneja.eth/gKt8c26kbFUHyn8ITRaZD8aYXlPw9Ir5ObWPi7g91Cc

The existing Proof-of-Work nodes would no longer be able to generate nodes for the mainnet to consume. Also, the state of the Ethereum network with all its history of transactions and balances would continue to be preserved with the Merge.

The Proof-of-Stake model determines which nodes generate the next block in proportion to the amount that the nodes have staked in the system. Currently, the staked Eth for the PoS version stands at ~13.3 million Eth valued at close to 20 billion USD. 

The new consensus mechanism is a significant departure from the current Proof-of-Work mechanism where the computational resources determine the node that is more likely to generate the next block.

This leads to significant energy savings as heavy computations are no longer required to secure the network. The Proof-of-Stake model is around 2000 times more energy efficient that PoW and it would result in 99.95% less energy consumed.

How does the Merge impact things?

The Merge event will impact the Ethereum ecosystem in multiple ways. We already looked at the energy impact from the switch to PoS with the Merge. Let us look at some other aspects – Transaction Speed, Fees, Security of the system, etc.

Gas Fees – As much as we would like it to reduce the transaction gas fees, the Merge is not going to have a significant impact on that. This would continue to be determined by network congestion factors to keep it functioning. 

Transaction Speed – The transaction speeds also would not be significantly impacted due to the Merge. In the current PoW system, blocks were generated at roughly every 13.2 seconds. In PoS post-Merge, a block will be generated every 12 seconds (with few drops here and there). Although the blocks would be generated faster, it would not result in any noticeable differences.

Security – The security of the network would also be improved with the Merge. It would still be susceptible to 51% attacks just that instead of computing power it would have to be staked Ethereum tokens. This is a really risky move for a participant who would have managed to secure such a high number of tokens. Additionally, with the consensus model changes, the finality of the blocks are also going to be achieved faster making it difficult for any unwanted/unplanned forks.

**Deflationary – **In the PoS system, there would be no additional block rewards for the validators except the transaction fees that are set by the users. This would reduce new Eth issuance and make the system consistently deflationary due to existing burning of tokens. The overall issuance of ether is predicted to be reduced by 4.2% a year. This would be good news for its long-term value.

How to prepare for the Merge?

For end-users and holders – You are not required to do any additional steps before or after the merge if you are a user or you have funds in your Ethereum wallet or in any exchange. Your funds would be absolutely safe and accessible post the Merge. 

Some exchanges have announced a temporary maintenance period during the Merge where deposits/withdrawals and/or trading may be suspended. Do take some time to go through any communication from your exchanges in this regard. 

After the Merge, there would be no new tokens created so do not pay heed to any such social media posts requesting to take action to get new Eth or Eth2 tokens. These would mostly be scamsters trying to siphon off funds from gullible users. 

For developers – If you are developing a dapp or already have a dapp deployed on the Ethereum mainnet you may want to go through the changes so ensure if your application is impacted. There are some changes in the block structure and Opcodes that are used. Also, the Goerli testnet should be considered as the primary testnet for testing dapps before deploying on the mainnet since it has executed the PoS merge successfully and is up to date. Ethereum Foundation has also come up with a post outlining the impact at the application layer that would be a good starting point to understand the impact –

https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/11/29/how-the-merge-impacts-app-layer

For node operators – For validators running a node, they would have to run both the consensus layer client and the execution layer client. Also, certain configurations need to be set up before the nodes are considered online. There is a detailed guide for the Merge readiness provided by Ethereum foundation that can be accessed here –

https://launchpad.ethereum.org/en/merge-readiness/

When is the Merge going to happen?

The Merge is supposed to be executed on the Mainnet around September 13/14, 2022. A real time countdown can be found at –

https://wenmerge.com/

The Merge will be based on the concept of Terminal Total Difficulty of producing blocks and not at a specified block number (which has been the standard approach of executing updates on the Ethereum network)

What happens if the Merge doesn’t go as planned

Ethereum had pushed out the date of the merge a few times earlier but this time all preparatory steps around the Merge have been completed without any major hiccups. The latest step in this process was the PoS merge of the Goerli testnet that was successfully completed on the 11th of August.

There seem to be less chances of any issues arising during the mainnet Merge but any unlikely event would be bad news for the ecosystem and could lead to a major sell-off. Also, it would mean delayed withdrawal opportunities for those who have already staked Ethereum on the Beacon Chain.

There is a strong possibility that even in the event of a successful Merge, there may be a hard fork of the mainnet that would continue to be backed by PoW consensus. In that case, there would be an official Proof-of-Stake version and an alternative Proof-of-Work version. It would all depend on what is the market acceptability of the PoW hard fork.

Coinbase has announced that it would evaluate all potential PoW forks post the Merge. Some others have already announced their support for the official PoS version.

What’s next after the Merge?

After the merge, the next major upgrade for Ethereum would be the Shanghai upgrade. This would enable withdrawals of the staked Eth on the network. That, automatically means that even right after the Merge, staked Eth withdrawals won’t be enabled. Also, keeping in mind the security considerations, post the Shanghai upgrade, the withdrawals would be rate limited so that there is no avalanche of withdrawals.   

As mentioned earlier, the Merge would lay the foundation for further upgrades to the network that would address the scalability concerns. There would be sharding of the network that is planned that would lead to multiple sub-chains of the network that are co-ordinated. Along with that there has been some significant work done on L2 rollups that would bundle multiple transactions and then post it on the primary Ethereum network for improved security. This would increase the scale manifold as well as reduce the transaction costs. There are multiple L2 rollup projects that are in operation today that are continuously optimizing on the data size requirements for storing bundled transaction data on the Ethereum network.

Further Reading

If you are curious to know more about the Beacon Chain, the Merge, Ethereum Fundamentals, the following resources could be helpful – 

[https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/#what-is-the-merge

](https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/#what-is-the-merge

)

[https://www.alchemy.com/the-merge

](https://www.alchemy.com/the-merge

)

[https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more

](https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more

)

[https://beaconcha.in/

](https://beaconcha.in/

)

If you are on Twitter, you must have seen usernames with the .eth suffix. If you have wondered what it means, this guide will help you understand as well as own a .eth domain for yourself.

Very simply put, an ENS domain is intended to be like a global identity mechanism for the web3 world. One of the basic problems it tries to solve is that you can have a human-readable name via the domain to the cryptic blockchain addresses. It makes it easier to share and transact compared to seeing a random sequence of digits and alphabets.

Although ENS domains are based on the Ethereum blockchain, they are not restricted to that. You can add your wallet addresses for other Blockchains as well. Along with that you can also include details about your social media handles as well as create an avatar for yourself.

There are over 259,000 ENS domain owners for over 562,000 ENS domains that have been registered

How is it different from other domains like .com, .org, etc.?

One of the key differences is that .eth domains are not managed by ICANN which is the body responsible for managing the registration of a number of high-level TLDs like .com, .org, .net, etc. [Pretty much all the domains that you interact with are controlled by ICANN].

Although you can host a website and point it to your ENS domain, all browsers do not support automatic resolution for ENS domains. Brave is one browser that supports the resolution of ENS domains. For other popular browsers like Chrome, you may need additional plugins and extensions to resolve the ENS domains. Another difference for these domains is that they can only point to decentralized websites that are hosted and set up on IPFS (Interplanetary File System). It does not support pointing to a standard website hosted on a standard web server.

How much does it cost?

ENS domains have a straightforward registration cost structure that is based on the number of characters and the number of years you want the subscription for.\n\nHere are the registration costs for the domains –

5+ character .eth names: $5 in ETH per year

4 character .eth names: $160 in ETH per year

3 character .eth names $640 in ETH per year

On top of this, since it is based on the Ethereum mainnet, you would have to shell the gas fees for the domain registration transactions (which in most cases will be the majority of the costs that you would incur). Do keep a lookout on the gas fees and pick a time when they are at the lowest. Weekends typically work better from that perspective.

How to set up an ENS domain

To register and set up your domain, you will need a few things – An Ethereum wallet with some $ETH loaded up for the registration charges. Also, you need to decide on the ETH domain that you would like to register.

The first step would be to go visit -

The first step would be to go to the ENS dapp – https://app.ens.domains

Then connect with the wallet of your choice with the app. The next step would be to search for your favorite domain to see if they are available. If your domain is already registered and not available, you can check out OpenSea to purchase it on the secondary market. The collection link for ENS domains on OpenSea is –

https://opensea.io/collection/ens

In case you are wondering how OpenSea, ENS domains are compliant with the ERC-721 token standard hence they can function and operate as NFTs.

If it is available, you can click on the domain listed and select the Register option. After that, you will see a screen like this

You can select the number of years for which you would want to register the domain. It is recommended to register for a higher number of years since you won’t incur gas fees every year and the incremental cost is nominal compared to the gas fees you would pay. The workflow does a good job of giving you an estimated cost for the domain registration split by the actual cost and the gas fees.

The domain registration happens in a 2-step process. First, you would need to submit a request for registration. A prompt would appear on your wallet to complete this step.

After you have confirmed the registration request transaction, there is a waiting period of roughly a minute after which you would be able to complete the registration.

This will prompt another transaction on your wallet with the registration cost and gas fees included. Once this is completed, you can confirm the transaction independently on Etherscan.

https://etherscan.io/

Congratulations! 🎉🚀 You are now a proud owner of an ENS domain. Feel free to flaunt your .eth username on Twitter or anywhere else!

The final step in this journey is to set up your reverse ENS record that would point to your Ethereum wallet address. You can do the same from the ENS app itself by selecting the ENS Domain record and updating the address as the reverse ENS lookup record. This would result in another transaction and would cost transaction gas fees.

ETH Leaderboard

There is also a global .eth leaderboard that goes through all the Twitter users with .eth suffix and ranks them based on their follower count. You can look at the leaderboard here at –

https://ethleaderboard.xyz/

Hope you liked this article and would be glad to learn if you were able to register your ENS domains. We will do a deep-dive later on the ENS domain resolution mechanism as well as the ENS token and the governance process.

I am assuming that you would have a basic understanding of what a DAO is. But for the uninitiated, DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. As Ethereum Foundation highlights, “DAOs are an effective and safe way to work with like-minded folks around the globe”. They are inherently democratic in nature, are completely transparent and public in their operations, and utilize all the benefits of decentralization.

We will have another post on the benefits of DAOs and their various flavors as well as use-cases but for now, let’s jump right in into creating one.

Pre-requisites

• A Polygon compatible wallet. I have used Metamask but other supported wallets are Frame, Fortmatic, and Portis

• Some MATIC tokens to fuel the transactions. [For me the transaction took around 0.015 MATIC, pretty cheap]

• Decide on what you would call your DAO and the DAO Token, who would be the initial token holders (have their addresses ready), what kind of a DAO you would like to form, what would be the voting configurations. [Don’t worry if this sounds too much, we will cover these as we go along the steps]

Steps to create a DAO

Step 1: Go to the Aragon Client dapp

Step 2: Change the Network from the top right section from Ethereum to Polygon

Step 3: Select “Create an organization“

Step 4: Template Selection

Aragon offers various templates to get started with your DAO. Choose the one that fits your needs. You have a company structure where the voting rights are based on the number of tokens held by a participant. There is a membership template where one member holds one vote as well as reputation-based voting where the tokens are non-transferable. There are guides detailing each of the templates so you can go through the details if you wish to. For the purpose of this tutorial, we have selected the Company template.

Step 5: Setup the name for the DAO. The naming has to be unique in the Aragon namespace and Aragon uses ENS domains for the names

Step 7: Voting Configurations

In this step, we need to define the voting configurations that would be used for the DAO proposals. There are 3 main configurations here - Support %, Minimum Approval %, and the Vote Duration.

Support % is the relative percentage of tokens that are required to vote “Yes” for a proposal to be approved. For example, if “Support” is set to 50%, then more than 50% of the tokens used to vote on a proposal must vote “Yes” for it to pass.

Minimum Approval is the percentage of the total token supply that is required to vote “Yes” on a proposal before it can be approved. For example, if the “Minimum Approval” is set to 20%, then more than 20% of the outstanding token supply must vote “Yes” on a proposal for it to pass.

For a particular vote, only if the minimum approval percentage and the support percentage values cross will it be passed.

The Voting duration is the time that is allotted for the participants to vote on the proposal. If the support and approval thresholds are not met within this time period then the vote does not pass.

Step 8: Token Configurations

In this step, we would need to define the Token configurations. You have to decide on the name of the Token that would be used for the DAO as well as the symbol for the token.

Once that is done, the next step is to define the token holders and their corresponding holdings. You can add multiple token holders and set their addresses and their starting balances. This can be done later as well after the DAO Setup is complete.
For the tutorial, I just added one token holder (me!) and assigned 10 million tokens (because why not!!)

Step 9: Review the information

This is the final step where you can review the information that you have entered for the DAO. All the voting and token related configurations along with others would be listed so make sure to do a thorough check before you hit launch the organization.

Step 10: Final Launch

After you have reviewed the information, just hit the “Launch your organization“ button. This will trigger the on-chain transaction and would require permission from your wallet. The gas fees for the operations would also be listed.

Once the transaction completes, you have your DAO ready to go 🚀 You can also validate the token contracts and details independently from Polygonscan.

Now you can just access the organization dashboard, transfer tokens, add additional participants, create proposals and operate a decentralized organization with just a few clicks.

Hope you liked this post and it helped you to understand how to create a DAO.

The consensus mechanism defines most of the key characteristics of the blockchain network, including throughput, finality, scale, etc. As such it is important to understand the different types of consensus mechanisms that are employed for powering different blockchain networks. We will learn briefly about a few of them here -

Proof of Work (PoW) - This is arguably the most popular consensus mechanism that is used in the Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum (so far!) networks among others. Here, to incorporate a new block into the ledger, the participant nodes need to solve a complex mathematical function. This is what is termed as the work that needs to be done and the proof is cryptographically embedded in the solution. The computational difficulty of the problem is typically adjusted to ensure higher security. The key argument against proof-of-work is that it consumes a tremendous amount of energy that may not be sustainable.

Proof of Stake (PoS) - In the proof-of-stake mechanism, the validators for new blocks are typically chosen in proportion to the amount of cryptocurrency/token that these participants own or have staked. They are able to avoid the computational complexity of proof-of-work systems thereby being more energy-efficient. Some notable blockchains that utilize the Proof-of-stake mechanism are Cardano, Algorand, Tezos. Ethereum network is also currently moving to a PoS based system from PoW.

Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) - This is another consensus mechanism that is based on the Byzantine General’s Problem. It outlines a fault tolerance mechanism that ensures network reliability even if a certain number of participants turn bad actors. There are variations to BFT like Practical BFT (PBFT) and Delegated BFT (dBFT). NEO is one of the blockchain networks that utilize dBFT consensus mechanism.

Proof of Burn (PoB) - This is another consensus mechanism where the block validators are chosen based on the amount of coins/tokens that are burned by them. Tokens are usually burnt by sending them to an inaccessible or invalid address thereby losing access to them forever. This indicates an investment into the network by the participants as they let go of the tokens in order to validate newer blocks into the ledger.

Proof of Capacity (PoC) - Proof of Capacity is a consensus system that is based on the amount of storage or capacity that a particular participant brings to the table. This is achieved by utilizing the storage available for storing possible solutions to the mining problem. Signum is a blockchain that employs Proof of Capacity consensus mechanism.

Proof of Elapsed Time (PoET) - Proof of Elapsed Time is a system that is based on a fair lottery system where a random wait time is assigned to the blockchain participants. after which they can introduce new blocks to the ledger. The random distribution ensures that each node gets an equal chance in the validation process.

Proof of Activity (PoA) - Proof of Activity is considered a hybrid between PoW and PoS mechanisms and tries to utilize the best aspects of these systems. The mining process starts in a similar fashion as PoW and then switches to the PoS mode for validation. Decred is a blockchain network that utilizes Proof of Activity consensus mechanism.

The above was a brief summary of various consensus mechanisms and blockchain networks utilize different variations of these or sometimes even a combination of these and others to keep the system trustworthy.

Hope you liked this introduction to the world of Blockchain consensus and it helped you to understand what goes on behind the scenes in these networks. Let us know if we missed any as well as which is your favorite consensus mechanism.